SafeSocial.com - Great idea! My thoughts...

I received an ad this morning for AOLSafeSocial. The idea is, parents can monitor their kids Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc., accounts via one portal, and the thing would both check the reputation of your child's online social network friends, and report any bad sites that your child may have been exposed to.

Having one new teen and another a bit younger, both knowing they're not allowed to have sex before their 42 (or I'm dead, whichever comes first) I had to try this.

Here's how it worked for me:

1. I clicked the AOL link which took me to safesocial.com.
2. The interface looked relatively sparse, but I did it anyway.
3. I decided that since I too have social networking memberships, I'd try it on myself first to see how it went. I added my email and name to the 'who do you want to spy on' (my words not theirs) field and clicked submit.
4. SafeSocial then sent me a link to my address telling me someone wants to monitor my social networking use. Do you really believe my 13 y/o daughter would consent to my monitoring her? (hint: not only no, but... you know the rest!)
5. Since I was experimenting on me, I clicked 'agree'.
6. Immediately SafeSocial squealed on me. It told me that I was on LinkedIn, which is not normally a site for kids. It then checked facebook and twitter.. both seemed ok (for now).

Couple of thoughts:

• My daughter will never allow my monitoring, nor should she have the option. I pay for her service, she's a minor in my charge, and I should be able to monitor without her consent. Love the idea of the service, but would have preferred to see it be more seamless.
  
• $9.99 isn't a bad price if the service actually delivers. I can say, I received multiple emails immediately upon signing on for the service.
  

Looking forward to seeing how this shakes out. My daughter is going to kill me!

Jeff